Earlier in the summer a relative gave me this photo of Larry’s parents sitting together. It’s hard to find a photo with just the two of them since Bruce was so active in the community, did a lot of volunteer work and they had such a large extended family. When I saw sketch #96 for our dt work at Let’s Capture These Sketches, I knew this was the photo I wanted to use. Picking out the right product proved to be a bit harder. At the time, I had just finished a layout working with the Cosmo Cricket Fleuriste line and the colors seemed to work for this photo as well, but things were not clicking for me an I think it had a lot to do with not have the right embellishments to go with the papers for this page, so I switched gears and went with Prima’s fabulous Botanical Collection and things fell into place for me then.

I chose the title Love Everlasting for this piece because it’s just the two of them and I can’t help but think of love and devotion when I see it. Bruce passed away a year before Larry and I met, so it’s been over 8 years and Grace has never once taken off her wedding ring and has no intentions of doing so. For her, it’s not “’til death do us part”…it’s “until we meet again.” Here’s what I came up with:

Each month, Sketchy Thursdays posts a new sketch for anyone who is interested in being a guest designer for their site to complete. Once you complete your take on the sketch, you simply post the link in the comments and members vote to select the GDT for the following month.

The twist for this month’s sketch is to use reading as the theme of your layout. Here’s my take on the challenge:

In case anyone is curious, the stacked books are in groups of 3 intentionally. When I take the kids to the library, they are each allowed to check out 3 books. My rule, not the library’s. The library would allow as many as the kids would like, but I find 3 is a good number for them to keep track of easily. TFL! If you’d like to play along too, CLICK HERE for details.

Earlier this month, a lovely sketch was posted on the Sweet Peach Crop Shop blog. I decided to combine it with the Pink Paislee color palette for July since those are the papers I would be using. The palette is also due today and I hadn’t worked it yet!

These photos were taken when Larry was playing peek-a-boo with Christian, who is 4 months old in these pics. Every time Larry would disappear, Christian seemed genuinely concerned about where his daddy had gone! 😀

I inked the background and handstitched the banners. Ideally I would have liked to have the “go” part of the titling done in clear alphas outlined with a touch of glitter, but since I didn’t have any, I scraped the glitter off of those 2 letters and coated them with light blue stickles to have them blend into the background more. Here’s what I came up with for the sketch and palette:

“Adhere in August with Helmar!”…that’s Helmar’s August challenge and it all starts with a wonderful sketch by Lydell Quin. As soon as I saw it, I knew I wanted to go with something kinda grungy and there are these pics of Christian I’ve been wanting to scrap, but hadn’t found the right moment. This sketch was perfect for what I had in mind!

Helmar adhesives make creating a page you know will last, an absolute breeze. I used their adhesive runner for mounting the photos and for the larger circles. The smaller circles and strips for journaling were glued with the Acid Free Glue, and I used Gemstone glue for the cutie “dew drops.” Here’s my take on their fab sketch: